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German Decoy Guns in
the Colonies During the First World War
A number of dummy guns
were used as decoys by the Germans in the First World War to deceive allied observers
into thinking that the they had more batteries in places that they
actually did not. The decoys were made from odd scrap that the
Germans had to hand. When seen close up some are better made than
others but for the most part they were probably good enough to
deceive the enemy from a distance. Here is a
small gallery of some of them...
Decoy Gun in South West Africa c1914
This photograph shows what appears to be a very
unconvincing decoy gun but it may well have been enough to fool
observers from a distance or an aeroplane.
Photo ©
Frankfurt University Koloniales Bildarchiv
Decoy Gun at Fort Iltis Tsingtao, 1914
This photograph was taken after the fall of Tsingtao and shows a
simply wooden decoy gun on a cart which in itself might look
convincing from a distance but the addition of the gun crew as
painted cut outs looks less impressive.
Photo ©
Imperial War Museum
Decoy Gun at Kigoma,
German East Africa, 1916
This photograph shows a dummy gun made to look like
one of the SMS Königsberg 10.5cm guns on the coast of
Lake Tanganyika. The Germans had withdrawn a similar gun
from the same place shortly before and made this very
detailed replica of the gun and its turret from a palm
log and wood scraps. Even the breech block, recoil
pistons and traverse controls have been lovingly
recreated. This was surely done by the gun's crew
themselves as the technical knowledge of the gun shown
here is exceptional when compared to the other two
photographs of decoy guns on this page. A similar fake
Königsberg gun was mounted on the SS Goetzen to replace
the original one withdrawn from there around the same
time.
Photo
©
Frankfurt University Koloniales Bildarchiv |